You Are Dumb, which is not a blog, posts new columns when it can manage to in these troubled Trumpian times. It is also a Twitter feed, @youaredumb, with content in a similar vein but much shorter. For a take on what a blog by me would be like, check out OLDNERD.

December 29th

As you may recall, on Friday, we summed up the first third of the year in Dumb, on our way to declaring the Dumbass of the Year. Today, we have the warm months, May through August. Are the dumbasses of summer sweating? Probably not. But they should be.

MAY:

May ran hot and cold. We had Obama's failed attempt to keep Plan B out of the hands of teenagers, the deregulated Texas chemical plant that exploded, Niall Ferguson's homophobic attack on Keynesian economics, the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, the beginnings of what would end up being the phony IRS "targeting" scandal, and French anti-gay extremism.

But since 2013 shaped up to be all about the war on the poor, the nod's got to go to awful Tennessee legislator Stacey Campfield, who tried and failed to take Tennessee parents off of welfare if their kids got bad grades.

It brutally exemplifies the Republican view of poverty as a problem of insufficient motivation, and that if we only make living in poverty even more punitive and awful than it would normally be, everyone will be rich. That it ultimately did not pass is irrelevant. Only a sociopath would even try.

JUNE:

June was when the Edward Snowden NSA revelations really kicked into high, forcing the Obama administration to briefly react before we all collectively shrugged at each successive rampant violation of our rights. There was Georgia governor Nathan Deal, who decided not to support an integrated prom because he deemed it a leftist political stunt. IRS agents were caught dancing, E.W. Jackson ran for Virginia's lieutenant governor to hilarious results, masturbating babies, cranky Legos,

But June was Paula Deen month, and if you'll pardon the expression, she totally owned the month. Or at least looked longingly back on the days of yore when celebrity chefs could own months. Best of all, she still hasn't really recovered, unlike certain waterfowl-based bigots we'll no doubt be discussing tomorrow.

JULY:

There are a lot of things that should, by all accounts, win July by a landslide. I spent a week declaring Louie Gohmert the new America's Stupidest Congresscritter. The Zimmerman verdict and everything resulting from that bullshit came crashing down, and America didn't love Pacific Rim, a collective decision I still cannot fucking understand.

But the month began with a column about Donny Ferguson, who took the Food Stamp Challenge on behalf of his boss, Steve "I'm Calling The Second Most Conservative Senator A Liberal In My Primary Against Him" Stockman, and failed so completely that I was able to identify five distinct ways he failed. And as another notable moment in the 2013 War On The Poor, it's the clear choice.

AUGUST:

August brought on the sort of kind of later sort of kind of reversed end to stop-and-frisk which may or may not have been made irrelevant by the election of Bill DeBlasio. And a bunch of mostly inconsequential stuff and followups to things like Zimmermania and such. I even spent a week just posting tweets.

So, in lieu of any better options, the nod goes to Australia's Stephanie Banister, the never ready for prime time Australian politician who tried to follow the Palin-Bachmann mold, tripped over her own tiny brain, and couldn't even manage to get hating on Muslims right in one of the top five racist countries in the world. It was the single greatest faceplant upon the world stage the year had to offer, and so she wins the month.